Social Conflict and Participation

Conflict and Nonviolence

While avoiding open conflict, Brazilian society has gone through
transitions that in general have moved in the direction of modernization
and democracy. Considering the decimation of Indian populations and the
maintenance of African slavery long after it had been abolished
elsewhere in the Americas, Brazil's colonial and imperial history was
characterized by violence. At the same time, however, there is a strong
Brazilian tradition of nonviolent resolution of conflicts. There was no
war of independence against Portugal, but only local or regional
conflicts, such as the Cabanagem (1835) in the Amazon, the War of the
Farrapos (1845) in Rio Grande do Sul, and the São Paulo Civil War
(1932) (see The Empire, 1822-89; The Republican Era, 1889-1985, ch. 1).
Although Brazil participated in the Paraguayan War, also known as the
War of the Triple Alliance (1864-70), most conflicts with neighboring
countries were solved peacefully. The transition from empire to republic
in 1889 was also relatively smooth. There was no generalized civil war,
but there were isolated events, such as the resistance of a millenarian
group at Canudos in the Northeast, described in Euclydes da Cunha's
classic Os sertões , translated as Rebellion in the
Backlands . In contrast to Spanish America, which fought protracted
revolutionary wars and split into many separate countries, Portuguese
America held together in one huge country. Although there were many
violent episodes, Brazilian history, on the whole, has been remarkably
peaceful.

Despite its nonbelligerent heritage at the national level, Brazilian
life is marked by considerable violence on a day-to-day basis. Indians
and slaves, or their descendants, have always been victimized. The rural
bandits (cangaceiros ) of the Northeast, of whom Lampião is
the most famous, battled rival groups and backlands colonels in the
early 1900s. In the post-World War II period, the struggle for land
pitted rural workers and their leaders against the landowners and their
hired gunmen, resulting in the murder of leaders and even priests, most
notably in frontier areas. Chico Mendes, a rubber-tapper leader killed
in Acre in 1988, was the most widely known among hundreds of victims. In
1995 and 1996, there were massacres of landless workers in Rondônia and
Pará. In urban areas, especially the largest, violence has become
commonplace, with frequent thefts, robberies, break-ins, assaults, and
kidnappings. The police themselves are sometimes involved in criminal
activities. In Rio de
Janeiro, the government has little control over
the favelas, which are dominated by gangs that control informal gambling
(a numbers game called jogo do bicho ) and drug trafficking as
well as influence local politics.

For the most part, contemporary violence cannot easily be construed
as a class struggle, at least as a struggle that involves collective
consciousness and action. It is essentially particularistic and
opportunistic at the individual level, although it often reflects
perceptions of social injustice. Avoidance of more organized conflict
between the privileged and the poor in Brazil can be attributed in part
to the corporatist (see Glossary) system set up during the regime of Getúlio
Dorneles Vargas (president, 1930-45, 1951-54) in the 1930s and 1940s.
This system was designed to preempt direct class confrontation through
well-controlled concessions to workers. The system of
government-regulated labor unions and clientelism (see Glossary) reached
its limits in the 1960s. In 1964 a bloodless military coup prevented it
from going farther in the direction of the dispossessed.

The authoritarian military regime, which lasted from 1964 until 1985,
used torture and killing to repress opposition, including cases of armed
struggle between 1966 and 1975, but was gradually worn down by
democratic pressures and sheer fatigue. From 1976 until 1994, political
efforts on the right and the left focused on redemocratization, with
greater popular participation. Revolution and repression were set aside.
Once again, a major transition occurred with relatively little violence,
at least as compared with Chile and Argentina, for example.

Growth of Social and Environmental Movements

In contrast to developed countries, Brazil had few
organizations--interest groups, associations, leagues, clubs, and
NGOs--up until the 1970s. This lack of mediation between government and
society was characteristic of a paternalistic and authoritarian social
structure with a small but powerful elite and a dispossessed majority.
During the 1970s and early 1980s, however, in part because of the growth
of the middle class, a wide variety of social movements and local and
national organizations appeared and expanded. Many engaged in some kind
of political activity. Women's groups also appeared. Increasingly,
social and political organizations reached into the lower classes. A
significant number were connected directly or indirectly to the Roman
Catholic Church, which sponsored CEBs (Ecclesiastical Base Communities)
as part of its "option for the poor." Independent labor
movements also grew during the 1980s. People took to the streets in 1984
to press for direct elections for president, as they did in 1992 to
demand the impeachment of President Collor de Mello.

Once a new constitution was written in 1988 and a president was
chosen through direct elections in 1989, opposition or resistance
movements were forced to redefine their roles. Many of them made a
transition from protest and denunciation to providing more constructive
contributions in the areas of health, education, and social services.
Others organized pressure on government agencies. A 1994 study showed
that some 5,000 NGOs are dedicated to: the environment (40 percent),
social change (17 percent), women's causes (15 percent), and racial
issues (11 percent), among other causes (17 percent). As a rule, these
movements are organized around the interests of neighborhoods or broad
concerns that cut across social class lines. Most are small, voluntary
organizations that operate at the local level and provide assistance,
but there are also large professional NGOs, such as the Brazilian
Institute of Social and Economic Analysis (Instituto Brasileiro de Análise
Social e Econômica--IBASE) and the Federation of Social and Educational
Assistance Agencies (Federação de Órgãos para Assistência Social).
Some of the large NGOs are connected to international NGOs, and many
receive donations from abroad (dues are not customary). Various
associations of national and regional NGOs have also developed.

Collaboration between social and environmental movements, in what has
been called "socio-environmentalism," reflects a Brazilian
belief that concerns with the environment are inseparable from concerns
with development, social equity, and justice. In this view, human and
environmental degradation have common causes, and their solution
requires the same sort of action.

Inclusion and Exclusion

Critical interpretations of Brazil's social situation in the 1980s
and 1990s point to what is seen as a deepening of the economic crisis
and the growth of misery and hunger. These interpretations are based on
a series of observations and evidence that includes loss of value of the
real minimum wage as a result of inflation, high unemployment levels,
widespread informal economic activity, cutbacks in government spending
on social programs, and mapping of indigence carried out by IPEA in
1990. They also take into account the more visible signs of
discrimination and deprivation, such as favelas, camps of landless
workers, urban violence, street children, and epidemics of diseases such
as cholera and dengue.

However, social indicators on such phenomena as infant mortality,
school enrollment, piped water, nutritional status, and protein
consumption improved significantly in the 1980s and early 1990s. The
improvements have resulted in no small measure from government
investments in the social area since the 1970s. These have been called
"compensatory social policies" because they seem to have been
designed to compensate for the economic policies that favor income
concentration. Although they were insufficient, the investments had
unquestionably positive effects. To some extent, the benefits also can
be attributed to fertility decline, which has biological and
socioeconomic effects, and to technological development in the areas of
health services and food production.

The apparent contradiction between negative and positive
socioeconomic trends can be explained in part by the greater visibility
of poverty, which has grown most in urban areas, while the
above-mentioned benefits are more diffuse and less visible. However, the
problems are not only because of perceptions or misreadings. The basic
explanation for the contradiction is the coexistence of simultaneous
processes of inclusion and exclusion. Inclusion resulted from extension
to the lower middle class, by means of the labor and consumer markets
and public services, of some of the benefits of development previously
restricted to the upper and upper-middle strata. They have gained from
participation in the labor market or markets for their goods and
services and from government-provided services, such as education,
health, and sanitation. In the simplest terms, the quantity of coverage
has increased, although serious problems of quality remain, and the
lowest strata continue to be excluded from integral participation in
markets and full access to government services.

The perception of crisis is accentuated by the fact that social
mobility slowed down considerably in relation to the rapid expansion of
the upper middle class in the 1960s and 1970s. According to national
surveys of household expenditures, 47 percent of the heads of household
questioned in 1973 said that they were better off than their parents. In
1988 the proportion fell to 38 percent, and 60 percent responded that
they were the same or worse off than their parents.

In sum, social polarization persists, but it is no longer a duality.
Its boundaries are multiple and mobile, depending on the dimension, and
remain poorly defined. There is a vast middle ground that defies simple
analyses and explanations and includes the upwardly and the downwardly
mobile.

Macroeconomic policies aimed at stabilization and competitive
insertion of Brazil into global markets contribute to slower economic
growth and structural unemployment, which in turn worsen exclusion. At
the same time, government authorities have stated their intention to
give priority to social equity, the reduction of regional inequalities,
and the defense of human and citizen rights. Effective achievement of
these goals, to the extent that economic conditions permit, depends on
appropriate analysis, political will, and especially the ability of
citizens to make their demands clear.

It is unclear whether never-ending economic and political crises,
disasters, and scandals will provoke disillusionment with the
redemocratization process and with Brazil's future, or whether Brazilian
society will continue to change in the direction of greater equilibrium
within society and between society and the environment. There are
important signs that significant change is underway. The campaign
against hunger and misery and for citizens' rights launched by Herbert
"Betinho" de Souza, a sociologist, made many Brazilians aware
of the poverty that surrounds them and made clear that economic growth
or government benefits alone will not solve their problems. The process
of decentralization opened up opportunities for participation but raised
questions about pork-barreling, accountability, and the ability of local
governments and civil society to make and implement informed decisions.
The question is to what extent the progressive forces will prevail so
that even if inequality persists, it will not be attributed to a failure
of Brazilian society to respond.